A higher resolution version of the overhead (19k x 20k) can be found here (https://flic.kr/p/2poAtT6), but be warned that not all computers will take kindly to loading it.
Thanks to Jonahex and Waffle for their work on the overhead map!
Maybe it's me who is not used to browsing flickr, but I can't seem to find the download button for the larger file. Could you help me?
In any case, as always, thank you for this year advent calendar!
I see upvotes, so I guess I'm not the only one experiencing this issue. But I Just found out!
The download logo flicker a sec when I open the page before disapearing right away. I managed to take a glimpse at it on the bottom right and localize it, and even if the icon is gone, the download link still work! (next to the favorite *star* and the share *arrow*, just to the right)
Probably an issue with my browser...
I'm guessing the grayed out places are areas that haven't been developed yet? If so that's some really impressive progress. Kind of a shame that Iliac Bay, Morrowind, Elsweyr and Valenwood are still so early in development, but definitely looking forward to Cyrodiil, Roscrea and Argonia!
Don't take this map at face value, they're mostly just showing it to us because it looks cool.
It's actually a pretty bad way to accurately see their progress since areas get reset/redone constantly.
It also doesn't show the interior level design or all the stuff that you can't show through a map (concept art, music, writing and so on).
Cyrodiil in particular is coming along really well. They still have a fair bit left to do but they're definitely getting there. And Argonia is making amazing progress considering how recently it started development.
That was all placeholder stuff IIRC. These maps really aren't a great way to gauge progress since they don't show you what's actually done, just what areas look done when viewed from massively far away. They also don't show you all the other kinds of progress the team might have made, like writing, scripting, interiors, new models and animations, etc. They mostly just look cool.
But the map doesn't show that, it instead shows they didn't redo much landscaping but instead deleted 90% of it. I'm hoping this map doesn't actually reflect that but is simply omitting those areas. If 90% of the landscaping has been deleted, that's thoroughly disheartening, and I'm sure even more discouraging to the modders who've spent years of their life working on Iliac Bay.
All of the landscaping that has been removed was placeholder LD, using placeholder Oblivion-era assets, that was going to be inevitably removed later. It bloated the mod's file size, caused a lot of crashes, and resetting it allowed to improve the base heightmap, so it made sense to do it sooner than later.
Except they weren't. I've followed beyond Skyrim for 8+ years, and watched many hours of landscaping streams back in the day. Most of the assets being used were designed for BS, and we've had many walk-abouts over the years where we've witnessed huge swaths of landscapes built to the quality of the base game or even better. We witnessed the verdant forests of Glenumbra with hamlets and orchards, we saw the sands of Hammerfell and then the rough wilderness of the Craglorn. We knew it was mostly first passes, and many assets were yet to be made and included, but the hours of landscaping weren't intended as simply a "placeholder" to be deleted once more assets were had. The expectation was to do another pass when more assets were had and could be included.
I don't know if you're actually on the team, so know more than me, but if not then I don't think you're right.
The Iliac Bay team have very clearly stated their reasoning for the reset in their Creation Mod Con entry from earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHZoY3Yz6Jc
Jfc Roscrea's huge. Didn't think the remapping would do **this** to it. At this point it's probably the most outta proportion plot on the entire map. There's no way the isle was anywhere close to that size.
I think we're at the point now where the yearly map update's aren't gonna do squat until Cyrodiil's release & those devs start to shift their attention, maybe, to other projects. I love that Roscrea, Atmora, and Cyrodiil are the first to get so much focus, but it really does interesting locales like Highrock, Morrowind, and Hammerfell some injustice.
Just gonna have to wait. Time feels like it's moving so much faster. Hope we can see a Roscrea release by 2025.
IB and Morrowind are solely focused on their pre-release areas right now. If you look within the borders of their respective pre-released, they're both pretty far along in level design.
> I think we're at the point now where the yearly map update's aren't gonna do squat until Cyrodiil's release & those devs start to shift their attention, maybe, to other projects.
I love the yearly map updates, but I agree, since a lot of these projects are focused on their prerelease areas. I felt that this year the State of Cyrodiil presentation would've made for a bigger Christmas Day entry in the Advent Calendar than the map itself.
I didn't recall that Roscrea had been blown up so much in scale. Used to be like Solstheim size IIRC? Now it's like a fourth or third the size of Skyrim itself if you mashed all the islands and glaciers together. Cool beans.
Honestly its looking amazing. I didn't even know they'd have that frozen area up north. I'm all for that. I liked exploring the sea of ghosts section of Skyrim, but it felt pretty small, and not very fleshed out, so more of that sounds good to me. I wanna feel like Yukon Cornelius.
Interesting, they deleted nearly the entire Morrowind map.
And removed large parts of northern Elsweyr.
For comparison: [Beyond Skyrim 2023](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fk2HoetXgAAb-Rm?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
I guess I've not paid close enough attention to Iliac Bay, but this map seems to indicate that they've thrown all the landscaping away except for the pre release sections? That'd be crazy to throw away a decade of work in the landscaping department.
Morrowind has a significant amount of work missing as well. Elsweyr has some work missing, but that wasn't as thoroughly landscaped, so easier to throw away I guess.
Or are these maps made only from the active branches of development, and those branches have had the rest of the world removed so that spoilers aren't released with the pre-releases? This is the only answer I can think of that makes any sense.
Someone else pointed me to the Iliac Bay showcase for modcon this fall which I had somehow missed. That explained everything and their decision made sense. The placeholders mentioned were only the city assets, which we already knew. All the landscaping outside the cities was intended to be the end goal, so they did indeed scrap a lot of work. But, again, their explanation in the showcase was good enough justification for what had to have been a difficult choice to scrap all level design and landscaping work.
We're hoping that we can get away with developing Atmora without having to reset the worldspace! Luckily for us, not many placeholder were used, and Atmora doesnt seem to have the same issues that plagued other provinces.
Heightmap-resers are never done because we "changed our minds", but more-so out of necessity. Roscrea had to be nuked because simply being on Roscrea deleted people's save files, for example.
Never ending project and now half of the map is still empty and you say old ones were placeholders but where are the new landscapes then?
it was a big mistake try to develop all provinces same time, lots of fans warned you to focus only cyrodiil but noo this is a hobby some hardcore elder scroll modder only wanna make assets for Morrowind or Hammerfell
and saw your new cyrodill video all of the textures are old and bad and look outdated,cities just copy paste oblivion city. Have you ever seen people Skyrim these days it is almost next gen in every way and you guys can't even publish pre-release for other than bruma in years
Fallout London was announced a couple of years ago they already finished the entire fallout game and it looked great.
Beyond Skyrim is a great idea and I have been following your project since the beginning but this project making painfully small progress and if you guys think you can drag this to 2030 or beyond.
I wish you the best of luck.
>it was a big mistake try to develop all provinces same time, lots of fans warned you to focus only cyrodiil but noo this is a hobby some hardcore elder scroll modder only wanna make assets for Morrowind or Hammerfell
People always complain about this, but what actual alternative is there? If BS only worked on Cyrodiil, then everyone who didn't want to work on Cyrodiil would just leave and make the other provinces separately. It wouldn't actually make Cyrodiil come out any faster, and if anything the lack of communication and resource-sharing between the projects would make things go slower.
A higher resolution version of the overhead (19k x 20k) can be found here (https://flic.kr/p/2poAtT6), but be warned that not all computers will take kindly to loading it. Thanks to Jonahex and Waffle for their work on the overhead map!
Maybe it's me who is not used to browsing flickr, but I can't seem to find the download button for the larger file. Could you help me? In any case, as always, thank you for this year advent calendar!
I see upvotes, so I guess I'm not the only one experiencing this issue. But I Just found out! The download logo flicker a sec when I open the page before disapearing right away. I managed to take a glimpse at it on the bottom right and localize it, and even if the icon is gone, the download link still work! (next to the favorite *star* and the share *arrow*, just to the right) Probably an issue with my browser...
I'm guessing the grayed out places are areas that haven't been developed yet? If so that's some really impressive progress. Kind of a shame that Iliac Bay, Morrowind, Elsweyr and Valenwood are still so early in development, but definitely looking forward to Cyrodiil, Roscrea and Argonia!
Don't take this map at face value, they're mostly just showing it to us because it looks cool. It's actually a pretty bad way to accurately see their progress since areas get reset/redone constantly. It also doesn't show the interior level design or all the stuff that you can't show through a map (concept art, music, writing and so on).
Cyrodiil in particular is coming along really well. They still have a fair bit left to do but they're definitely getting there. And Argonia is making amazing progress considering how recently it started development.
Also gonna add that Morrowind and Iliac Bay are focused on their prerelease areas, which have nearly complete landscaping it seems.
So what happened to iliac bay? Wasn’t it filled in last year?
That was all placeholder stuff IIRC. These maps really aren't a great way to gauge progress since they don't show you what's actually done, just what areas look done when viewed from massively far away. They also don't show you all the other kinds of progress the team might have made, like writing, scripting, interiors, new models and animations, etc. They mostly just look cool.
Thanks for the info!
IIRC, they totally redid a ton of the landscaping.
But the map doesn't show that, it instead shows they didn't redo much landscaping but instead deleted 90% of it. I'm hoping this map doesn't actually reflect that but is simply omitting those areas. If 90% of the landscaping has been deleted, that's thoroughly disheartening, and I'm sure even more discouraging to the modders who've spent years of their life working on Iliac Bay.
All of the landscaping that has been removed was placeholder LD, using placeholder Oblivion-era assets, that was going to be inevitably removed later. It bloated the mod's file size, caused a lot of crashes, and resetting it allowed to improve the base heightmap, so it made sense to do it sooner than later.
Except they weren't. I've followed beyond Skyrim for 8+ years, and watched many hours of landscaping streams back in the day. Most of the assets being used were designed for BS, and we've had many walk-abouts over the years where we've witnessed huge swaths of landscapes built to the quality of the base game or even better. We witnessed the verdant forests of Glenumbra with hamlets and orchards, we saw the sands of Hammerfell and then the rough wilderness of the Craglorn. We knew it was mostly first passes, and many assets were yet to be made and included, but the hours of landscaping weren't intended as simply a "placeholder" to be deleted once more assets were had. The expectation was to do another pass when more assets were had and could be included. I don't know if you're actually on the team, so know more than me, but if not then I don't think you're right.
The Iliac Bay team have very clearly stated their reasoning for the reset in their Creation Mod Con entry from earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHZoY3Yz6Jc
Ah, thanks, missed their section, so I guess it's time for me to go back and catch up.
Well they're not exactly going to go out and say "internal turmoil" to the public are they? Especially with such a cloistered dev style.
If you want to chase conspiracy theories that's your business, not mine.
Jfc Roscrea's huge. Didn't think the remapping would do **this** to it. At this point it's probably the most outta proportion plot on the entire map. There's no way the isle was anywhere close to that size. I think we're at the point now where the yearly map update's aren't gonna do squat until Cyrodiil's release & those devs start to shift their attention, maybe, to other projects. I love that Roscrea, Atmora, and Cyrodiil are the first to get so much focus, but it really does interesting locales like Highrock, Morrowind, and Hammerfell some injustice. Just gonna have to wait. Time feels like it's moving so much faster. Hope we can see a Roscrea release by 2025.
IB and Morrowind are solely focused on their pre-release areas right now. If you look within the borders of their respective pre-released, they're both pretty far along in level design.
> I think we're at the point now where the yearly map update's aren't gonna do squat until Cyrodiil's release & those devs start to shift their attention, maybe, to other projects. I love the yearly map updates, but I agree, since a lot of these projects are focused on their prerelease areas. I felt that this year the State of Cyrodiil presentation would've made for a bigger Christmas Day entry in the Advent Calendar than the map itself.
That was a very informative description of how much progress has been completed.
At this rate, Roscrea will be the only area to be 1:1 with its canon measurements in the lore. XD
I didn't recall that Roscrea had been blown up so much in scale. Used to be like Solstheim size IIRC? Now it's like a fourth or third the size of Skyrim itself if you mashed all the islands and glaciers together. Cool beans.
Yeah, they redid the heightmap earlier this year since they decided the scope of the project was enough that they needed the extra space.
Honestly its looking amazing. I didn't even know they'd have that frozen area up north. I'm all for that. I liked exploring the sea of ghosts section of Skyrim, but it felt pretty small, and not very fleshed out, so more of that sounds good to me. I wanna feel like Yukon Cornelius.
Interesting, they deleted nearly the entire Morrowind map. And removed large parts of northern Elsweyr. For comparison: [Beyond Skyrim 2023](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fk2HoetXgAAb-Rm?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
In both cases they were placeholder landscaping that would get replaced down the line anyway. Same as what happened with IB's map.
I guess I've not paid close enough attention to Iliac Bay, but this map seems to indicate that they've thrown all the landscaping away except for the pre release sections? That'd be crazy to throw away a decade of work in the landscaping department. Morrowind has a significant amount of work missing as well. Elsweyr has some work missing, but that wasn't as thoroughly landscaped, so easier to throw away I guess. Or are these maps made only from the active branches of development, and those branches have had the rest of the world removed so that spoilers aren't released with the pre-releases? This is the only answer I can think of that makes any sense.
All the things they threw out were just placeholder assets.
Someone else pointed me to the Iliac Bay showcase for modcon this fall which I had somehow missed. That explained everything and their decision made sense. The placeholders mentioned were only the city assets, which we already knew. All the landscaping outside the cities was intended to be the end goal, so they did indeed scrap a lot of work. But, again, their explanation in the showcase was good enough justification for what had to have been a difficult choice to scrap all level design and landscaping work.
What happened to the area west of vvardenfell? Was looking kinda fleshed out last year, now everything got wiped.
Should we expect Atmora's map to be completely wiped by next year as well?
We're hoping that we can get away with developing Atmora without having to reset the worldspace! Luckily for us, not many placeholder were used, and Atmora doesnt seem to have the same issues that plagued other provinces. Heightmap-resers are never done because we "changed our minds", but more-so out of necessity. Roscrea had to be nuked because simply being on Roscrea deleted people's save files, for example.
Honestly expecting a new heightmap announcement in 2024 with all assets deleted at this point 😔
Wow, a Roscrea looks a lot better
Question: will those little islands to the east of Morrowind be implemented at some point?
IIRC the northern ones have some importance to the Telvanni, so probably.
Would be neat, however how would one get there?
Swim
Based
Impressive!
I love the work y'all are doing!
Thanks
Hope you guys in the dev teams have gotten a good start to the new year. Very excited for roscrea, Cyrodil, and the new north.
Never ending project and now half of the map is still empty and you say old ones were placeholders but where are the new landscapes then? it was a big mistake try to develop all provinces same time, lots of fans warned you to focus only cyrodiil but noo this is a hobby some hardcore elder scroll modder only wanna make assets for Morrowind or Hammerfell and saw your new cyrodill video all of the textures are old and bad and look outdated,cities just copy paste oblivion city. Have you ever seen people Skyrim these days it is almost next gen in every way and you guys can't even publish pre-release for other than bruma in years Fallout London was announced a couple of years ago they already finished the entire fallout game and it looked great. Beyond Skyrim is a great idea and I have been following your project since the beginning but this project making painfully small progress and if you guys think you can drag this to 2030 or beyond. I wish you the best of luck.
>it was a big mistake try to develop all provinces same time, lots of fans warned you to focus only cyrodiil but noo this is a hobby some hardcore elder scroll modder only wanna make assets for Morrowind or Hammerfell People always complain about this, but what actual alternative is there? If BS only worked on Cyrodiil, then everyone who didn't want to work on Cyrodiil would just leave and make the other provinces separately. It wouldn't actually make Cyrodiil come out any faster, and if anything the lack of communication and resource-sharing between the projects would make things go slower.